Saturday, January 24, 2015

Totally forgot the entire point of the prior post, which was to add this great rock and roll yet meaningful song to the post. Duh! Getting old and losing my memory sucks, darlings! But I will blogger on... Check out OWNER OF A LONELY HEART by the band YES. If you cannot quite understand the lyrics because they're kind of smushed beneath the fabulous beat of the guitars and drums, the video's symbolism will speak to you and you can always find the lyrics online somewhere if you want further clarification. For me, the imagery within the video spoke volumes -- the perfect Epitaph to my working years.

I have been a very bad blogger, indeed. So sorry. But I've been busy. You see, I've been spending a LOT of time planning out my GREAT ESCAPE FROM THE WORLD OF ASSHOLES!

I am very happy to announce that it has come to pass -- I am retiring from the legal world. To sing Etta James' classic 'At Last..."

I was a very good girl, I was, I was. I dutifully informed Human Resources on January 5 that I was retiring, and that afternoon I had a sit-down talk with the head of the Practice Group I work in to tell him that I was retiring.

I expected that it would be a Bomb dropped amidst the clink-clunk-clink workings of the firm, but I never dreamed it would turn into the NEUTRON BOMB that it ultimately became.

I am feeling sooooooooooo much justification, what else can I say, except ROLLING ON THE FLOOR LAUGHING MY ASS OFF (ROFLMAO).

Suffice to say, I have lived through some very interesting times since January 5. For one thing, I never knew until the past few weeks just how many people within the firm actually knew who I was. Also, how many people actually appreciated the work I did, other than primary boss, who never did, he only had constant criticism and snide comments, and bad-mouthed me behind my back -- actually caught him at it the day before Christmas Eve, as I happened to overhear his conversation when I entered a stairwell going down to the main file room, and he and companion were coming down from an upper floor -- got an EAR-FULL, I did. It's irrelevant now what he said or why he said it. Suffice to say that I had realized from Year 2 onward working for the Schmuck (off and on for the past 12 and 1/2 years) that he was the worst kind of male with pretensions to be a human being (he is not).

I bided my time, learned more and more about investing, put as much funding as I could into my 401(k) and private investments and chose my investments very carefully, then chose an investment advisor the year I turned 60 to help me pull my plan together as I was too busy to pay as much attention as necessary to it.

I sold my big house earlier this year and downsized to a much smaller and less expensive home -- but at the time I was not yet contemplating retirement in 2015; rather, I was preparing for retirement in 2017. Suffice to say certain things happened (including that overheard December 23rd conversation) that persuaded me it was better to get out as soon as I could.

I crunched my numbers several times. I figured I would have enough to live on. Not "high on the hog" as the old saying goes, but just fine. I wouldn't be eating canned pet food (which - if you've noticed lately, has gotten quite expensive) or digging through the dumpsters outside fast food restaurants for scraps, trying to fight off much bigger homeless men for scraps of food. Not burning scavengered wood in a make-shift heater to keep the house warm, and risk dying by carbon-monoxide poisoning. Not living in no-light-bulb darkness with most of my appliances unplugged because I cannot afford the electric charges. Not being able to pay for my medical prescriptions (drugs), or afford a decent hair cut once every 2 months, or pay for hair-color to keep the grey hairs at bay ( I DETEST GREY HAIR).

My investment advisor crunched the numbers, too. He's convinced that somehow if I should live to age 95 I'll have more than a million dollars in my investment pot. I don't believe it, but we've gone over his numbers twice now and they all work, so maybe he 's right and I'm just being uber-conservative. LOL! That's funny - Jan, an uber-conservative at anything? Whatever funds there are when I die will go into my Trust, dedicated to funding an annual women-only chess tournament in Milwaukee, Wisconsin that will bear both my surname and the Goddesschess brand.

Hell, if I do well enough stock-picking (I seem to have a knack), maybe I'll be hosting at least one of those fancy-pants tournaments in my hometown before I die.

PROMISE once R DAY is here, while I've got loads of projects around this down-sized house that need time and attention, I'll be blogging regularly. It's just that right now, during those two precious weekend days, there is SO much that needs to be taken care of, and some of it cannot be done online. Today, for instance, I had to go to the clinic for my monthly blood draw to have my PRO-TIME or INR measured. June 2012 and have been poked regularly in my arms since then to get blood to measure the relative "thickness or thiness" of my blood.

It sucks! It entails a bus trip on two buses from my house to get to the clinic, or a long hike to a single bus ride. On the weekends the bus service sucks (like one bus an hour), so I ended up walking 1.3 miles to the clinic after I got off the bus I caught 2 blocks away from my house. And, unfortunately, when I was walking out of the clinic and toward a bus that would take me down to the bus stop to get home, the bus whizzed on by when I was about a block away. No way to stop it, no way to catch it. Ended up walking another 1.3 miles so I could catch the bus to take me back home. I'm getting slower. Used to be able to do that in about 15 minutes. Today, it took me 23 minutes (I timed it). This Old Grey Mare, She Ain't What She Used To Be. Oh, crap. Now you know how important a good hair dresser and hair coloring is!

Our Commitment to Chess

Scholarships for Chess Femmes

Our Commitment to Chess

2012 Goddesschess Canadian Women's Closed Chess Championship

2014 SPONSORSHIPS

Hales Corners Chess Challenge XIXApril 12, 2014Milwaukee, WIPrizes for female players in Open and Reserve sections and paid entry to next HCCC for top female finisher in each section. This is Goddesschess' 12th HCCC!

Goddesschess Fighting Spirit Award

2013 U.S. Women's Chess Championship

2013 SPONSORSHIPS

Hales Corners Chess Challenge XVIIIOctober 12, 2013Milwaukee, WIRecord prize money awarded to chess femmes - $800!In honor of National Chess Day and the one year anniversary of the passing of our webmaster, researcher and writer, Don McLean, additional prizes of $150 were awarded to the top two male finishers in each Section.Milwaukee Summer Challenge IIJune 15 - 16, 2013Milwaukee, WIPrizes for the chess femmes and funding a best game prize

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"Advanced Chess" Leon 2002

About Me

I'm one of the founders of Goddesschess, which went online May 6, 1999. I earned an under-graduate degree in history and economics going to college part-time nights, weekends and summer school while working full-time, and went on to earn a post-graduate degree (J.D.) I love the challenge of research, and spend my spare time reading and writing about my favorite subjects, travelling and working in my gardens. My family and my friends are most important in my life. For the second half of my life, I'm focusing on "doable" things to help local chess initiatives, starting in my own home town. And I'm experiencing a sort of personal "Renaissance" that is leaving me rather breathless...